Hey Sami, A huge congrats on both Vegas and Kona. I'm intrigued about your latest post (kona) and what looks like a lack of swimming. It looks like you could have swum maybe 90 minutes per week. I'm defintiely in favor of the less is more approach and have also gone under 9h twice, but 1 maybe 2 swims seems hard to see how you swum well enough in Kona to get that results. Just interested. Cheers Kristian
Thanks very much!
I actually have zero swimming background. I could barely swim, certainly not more than 100yds of bad-form freestyle at a time in 2004 when I had to learn it for my first triathlon. So my starting level was zero and then I’ve gradually improved my swimming to a ~28-30min half-ironman swim or ~60min (above without wetsuit, at/below with a wetsuit) Ironman swim. I don’t think that’s fast or very good at all, but it’s the best I can do with my very limited swim training time.
I usually swim 2-3 20-40min weekly workouts, so about 90min on average per week. However, closer to big races, I often freak out because of the lack of swimming and then swim 5-6 times a week for two weeks even if just 10-20minutes a day. I’ve found that swimming (due very high water resistance) is so technique dependent that frequency (e.g., 5-6 swims a week) is the easiest way to improve swim times quickly.
If I had the time to swim 4-5hrs a week, I’m sure it’d improve my swim time, but this is the best I can do with limited time.
